Individuals seeking dental care often have the records of their examination entered into a chart. The completed chart exhibits the locations of carious, broken and missing teeth. Any work previously performed by a dentist, including restorations, crowns and bridges, is also displayed. Because this information is used for treatment planning, evaluation and patient identification, it must be complete and accurate. Specifically with respect to caries management, existing tooth charts are unable to distinguish between early and advanced tooth decay. As shown in FIG. 1 (PRIOR ART), three different stages of tooth decay are shown in the photographs, but the same chart symbol of a red circle is the conventional way for representing all stages of the disease (manually and electronically). This lack of descriptive detail is a major barrier to modem caries management since the stage and transition from one stage to another is not possible. Moreover, the prior art charting system does not record specific anatomical location and no more than two separate sites on the chewing (coronal) surface.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for a method and system for advanced caries management which provides more descriptive representations of tooth decay, including site severity, activity (demineralization or remineralizing), and cavitation state (non-cavitated or cavitated) of decay. The cavitation state is extremely important to know since a non-cavitated region of decay can potentially heal itself so that no filling is needed. Dentists who explain to patients that their decay is not cavitated and they clean the area free of bacteria, reduce sugar between meals, and rinse with fluoride are likely to cause the decay to remineralize. No existing tooth decay system records this information.
There is also a need in the art for a simple graphical user interface (GUI) to make entering and viewing data relative to caries management easier. It is well known that the development and proliferation of GUIs have greatly enhanced the ease with which users interact with data both in the entry and in the display of information. A conventional GUI display includes a desktop metaphor upon which one or more icons, application windows, or other graphical objects are displayed. Typically, a user interacts with a GUI display utilizing a graphical pointer, which the user controls with a graphical pointing device, such as a mouse, touch pen, trackball, or joystick. For example, depending upon the actions allowed by the active application or operating system software, the user can select icons or other graphical objects within the GUI display by positioning the graphical pointer over the graphical object and depressing a button associated with the graphical pointing device. In addition, the user can typically relocate icons, application windows, and other graphical objects on the desktop utilizing the well known drag-and-drop techniques. By manipulating the graphical objects within the GUI display, the user can control the underlying hardware devices and software objects represented by the graphical objects in a graphical and intuitive manner.
A number of patents exist which relate to patient charting and/or caries management, including, U.S. Pat. No. 4,869,531 to Rees, U.S. Pat. No. 5,554,034 to Zand, U.S. Pat. No. 5,636,870 to Enhorning, U.S. Pat. No. 5,720,502 to Cain, U.S. Pat. No. 5,823,773 to Brysch, U.S. Pat. No. 5,944,531 to Foley, U.S. Pat. No. 5,984,368 to Cain, U.S. Pat. No. 6,116,910 to Green, and U.S. Pat. No. 6,162,177 to Bab et al., all of which are incorporated by reference herein.